In connection with surgery for a number of diseases in the gastro-intestinal tract, one of the consequences in many cases is that the patient is left with an abdominal stoma, such as a colostomy, an ileostomy or a urostomy in the abdominal wall for the discharge of visceral contents. The discharge of visceral contents cannot be regulated at will. For that purpose, the user will have to rely on an appliance to collect the material emerging from such opening in a bag, which is later emptied and/or discarded at a suitable time.
An ostomy appliance may be in the form of a one-piece appliance for which a collecting bag for human body wastes is permanently, or fixedly, secured to an adhesive wafer for attachment to the human skin. Alternatively, the ostomy appliance may be a two-piece appliance comprising a wafer and a collecting bag which may be coupled to and un-coupled from each other through a coupling means. This has the effect that the wafer does not need to be separated from the skin of the user as often as exchange of the collecting bag requires. The wafer may need only to be changed for example every third or fourth day depending on the user, whereas the collecting bag may be changed more than once per day. Typically, it is desirable to need as few exchanges of the wafer as possible in order to reduce the risk of skin complications.
One of the main concerns of ostomates using ostomy appliances having an adhesive wafer for attachment to the skin surrounding a stoma, and where a collecting bag is attached to the wafer for collecting stoma output, is that the ostomy adhesive attachment may be compromised resulting in leakage or even complete detachment of the ostomy appliance.
Numerous attempts have been made to solve this problem and even though some attempts have been partly successful, still there exist no products which completely solve this problem.
One reason why this is so difficult to solve is the fact that stomas and peoples anatomy are very different. Different considerations need to be made for thin people than for larger people, for different skin types, for placement of the stoma which may vary a lot from person to person, for scar tissue surrounding the stoma, for local irregular skin topography and combinations of all of the above.
Particularly in relation to persons suffering from hernia, i.e. the phenomenon that a bodily structure (e.g. the intestine) protrudes through a rupture in smooth muscle tissue surrounding it, experience shows that it is often very difficult to attach an ostomy appliance to the skin surface where the hernia is located in a manner that provides satisfactory protection against leakage from stomal fluids. It is not uncommon that the surgical procedure undertaken to make a stoma on a patient also results in a weakening of the muscle tissue of the stomach wall which may consequently lead to the formation of a hernia where the stoma is located on the skin surface (or close or adjacent to the stoma).
Moreover, a hernia is not a static phenomenon. It is almost certain never to take a perfect geometrical shape but instead often has a highly irregular topography. This may be caused by many factors such as conditions in the physical surroundings of the user, level of activity of the user and contents of the bowels at any given time, just to mention a few.
In addition to the formation of hernias, other physical conditions or pathologies may also mean or lead to irregular skin topography such as bulges or otherwise “hilly” stomach skin surface, the causes including e.g. trauma and/or obesity.